Skip to Content

Arts Intel Report

Elisabeth Leonskaya plays Schubert

September 22, 2026

Born and trained in Tbilisi, mentored by the Russian titan Sviatoslav Richter at the Moscow Conservatory, for decades an Austrian national in Vienna, the 80-year-old pianist Elisabeth Leonskaya continues to astonish, dazzle, and delight. Not at the Muziekgebouw in the Dutch tech-and-design hub of Eindhoven, however, where her recital last December was canceled because free tickets for Russian soldiers at a Moscow recital of hers supposedly constituted support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Oh, brother. In March, The Guardian gave Leonskaya’s crazy-quilt evening at the Wigmore Hall a four-star writeup that read more like an eight-star (on their scale of five). For an encore, she’s back with all-Schubert, a specialty of hers since her time with Richter. “No question about it,” Gramophone once declared, “Leonskaya’s Schubert … should provide you with a lifetime’s worth of musical nourishment.” Her playlist this time skews light and graceful, though in Schubert hidden shadows are seldom far away. —Matthew Gurewitsch